Something of Value
by Zefyria Nuva
Summary: "You should probably be running right now." The words sliced through Swindle's processor like crystal barbs. He onlined his scatter blaster—just in time for Lockdown to press the cannon against his chestplate and fire. /LockdownxSwindle. Oneshot.\


I KNOW, I KNOW. I should be working on Absit Invidia. Yes. But this has been lurking about on my hard drive for almost a year now, and gosh darnit, this pairing doesn't get nearly as much love as it should. X3 So all you closet LockdownxSwindle fans out there, enjoy~

* * *

Swindle was rather proud of the fact that he was still online.

In his line of work, it didn't take much to earn yourself simmering resentment and a bounty high enough to outweigh whatever usefulness you held. Fortunately for Swindle, he was very good at being useful. Not only did he run the largest arms empire in the universe, he was also the crux of an information network that stretched farther and deeper than any bot (aside from himself) knew, tying together multiple smaller webs that had existed before his time into one enormous feed. The two most valuable weapons in the universe were at his fingertips, ready to be divulged to any bot of any allegiance at any time...as long as they could pay for said weapons, of course.

Swindle may have been a cheapskate, but he was a _smart_ cheapskate. He knew which bots to give a fair price to, and he knew which bots he could, pardon the expression, _swindle_ a few extra credits out of. He was also _very_ careful not to irritate the wrong bots too often—not that anyone would be crazy enough to actually send anyone after him (except possibly for the Autobots, but you know how they are). Small and slight-of-build, he wasn't exactly an imposing mech—but every bot who knew him knew that his chassis was an arsenal in and of itself, and that he was more than happy to use said arsenal, along with the first lethal weapon or three he could whip out of his chest compartment/personal storage dimension, to blow any attacker into shrapnel. So he lived a life that was not only enjoyable, but also happened to be moderately safe, as long as he remained in his position of general usefulness to everyone around him.

The highlight of this life, of course, was when his favorite customers came by looking for expensive toys to play with.

Lockdown cast an appreciative eye over the devices and weaponry laid out on the bench before him. For all that he was "just" a bounty hunter, he knew good equipment when he saw it—and this was top-quality gear. Over-the-top. The kind of stuff you wouldn't expect to find on the black market, or even on the white market. "How the Pit did you get your slippery servos on mods like these?"

"Ah-ah-ah!" Swindle wagged a finger, grinning with almost unholy glee. "I can't tell you that! Trade secret, you know. But I _can_ tell you that it wasn't easy!" He patted what looked like a cross between a laser analysis scanner and a fusion cannon, before returning his eager, glittering gaze and his Cheshire Cat smile to the bounty hunter. "You asked to see my best, and I _never_ disappoint my loyal customers."

"Assuming they can pay for the privilege," Lockdown said with a snort, picking up an arm-mounted spike cannon and examining it thoroughly.

Swindle chuckled, resting his servos on his hips. "Ahhh, you know me far too well! Now, normally I'd cut you a better deal, since you _are_ my favorite customer and all, but I have to draw the line with these babies."

"Hmph." Lockdown rolled his optics. "With the kinds of deals you cut, I'd probably be better off paying full-price."

That got another laugh from the tan mech (Primus, he loved this job!). "I take offense to that! Rare mods like these only come around once in a million stellar cycles, y'know—I can't afford to just pawn them off to any old bot. I'll need _plenty_ of compensation."

Lockdown snorted, setting the spike cannon down and moving along the bench. "Fine. Name your price."

The smug little smile widened. Lockdown was no fool, Swindle knew that from experience; the bounty hunter would know immediately if he tried to rip him off. But that didn't mean he couldn't get a pretty penny back in exchange for his best equipment. "That depends on what you find yourself buying. I'm a reasonable mech, after all."

"Yeah. Right." Lockdown rolled his optics again. After a few more cycles of examination, accompanied by more of Swindle's rambling about his finds, the bounty hunter lifted some kind of arm-mounted electrical cannon that had settings everywhere from stun to vaporize. "I'll take it all."

Cash-register bells went off in Swindle's head. "_Everything?_ You're not pulling my crank case, are you, pal?"

"This faceplate look like I'm joking?" Lockdown opened a panel on the side of his arm and slotted the electrical cannon in, fiddling with the wiring for a moment and hefting it experimentally. "Been taking some risky jobs lately. Almost got offlined a couple times. More than a couple, actually—I'm gonna _need_ better mods if I want to survive."

Swindle nodded eagerly, already doing the calculations in his head. If there really was a Primus, he was smiling on the arms dealer today—the figures he was adding up were impressive by themselves, but combined, they produced a staggering number. "I _sincerely_ hope you have the credits for these, Lockdown ol' buddy!"

"Yeah, yeah." Lockdown sighted down the cannon at the wall, spinning dials and playing with the settings. "Put it on my tab, you know I always pay up. Oh, and speaking of survival, Swindle?"

"Hmm?" Preoccupied by his calculations, the arms dealer leaned a little closer to Lockdown in order to hear what he was saying.

"You should probably be running right now."

The words sliced through Swindle's processor like crystal barbs. A shocked gasp escaped him, and he onlined his scatter blaster—just in time for Lockdown to press the mouth of the electrical cannon against his chestplate and fire.

o - o - o

The first coherent thought that graced his dark, muddled processor was, _Am I offline?_

The second was, _Oh slag._

Swindle onlined his optics faintly, trying not to attract attention to the fact that he'd come out of stasis...and his processor stalled, refusing to accept the information it was being fed. He spent almost a cycle attempting to run logic programs and risk assessments around the sluggish confusion of his own dimly-conscious mind, until a sharp, throbbing pain behind his optics forced the tan mech to offline them against the confusing scene.

He _definitely_ wasn't in his own ship, but he supposed that was a long stretch to begin with. He wasn't in any kind of brig, either—there was too much space, and no force field or energon bars to keep him in. There were no obvious torture devices nearby (though there _were_ some rather disturbing shapes lurking in the shadows around him...). But the fact remained that it was dark, and he'd been dumped unceremoniously in a corner like so much scrap metal. Was he even supposed to be online? There was no way to know for sure. Only one thing he could do...try to escape.

The arms dealer shifted his weight in a cautions attempt to rise. Pain shot through his processor, an odd feeling considering most of his frame was cold and numb. Ignoring the sharp lances digging in behind his optics, he struggled slowly to his feet—only to topple over again and land hard on his side, his equilibrium sensors flailing wildly. The crash echoed and rebounded across the room, even louder in his own audials because he'd been trying so hard to be silent. There was no way he'd be able to sneak out of here now, not after that amount of noise...

"Finally awake, huh?"

The bounty hunter's familiar frame unfolded from the shadows, and Swindle found himself struggling to his hands and knees, trying his damnedest to move _away._ On pure reflex, he tried to online his blaster—but of course it wasn't there. None of his weapons were.

"You...!"

Lockdown held up his servos in what appeared to be a placating gesture. "Take it easy, Swindle."

"_Easy?_" Swindle braced himself against the wall and tried to push himself up again, only to sink to his knees a moment later. "Son of a glitch...what did you _do _to me?"

An emotion Swindle had never thought he would feel again gripped at his spark...fear. His weapons were gone. His transwarp field had been deactivated. And he couldn't even stand_—_the numbness had begun to fade now, but in its place was a deep, reaching ache that solidified into sharp bursts of pain whenever he moved. He was absolutely helpless, and the bounty hunter was stalking towards him, no doubt intent on finishing the job he had somehow botched—

Lockdown frowned, then grabbed him under the arms and hauled him upright. Too stunned to struggle, Swindle could only let out a grunt as the bounty hunter pushed him toward the bench. "Don't try to move around so much yet, you'll hurt yourself."

Swindle stumbled backwards, practically falling onto the bench. Expletives careened through his processor as he glared at the bounty hunter, violet optics almost tinting over red as terror warred with fury in his expression. "What do you care if I'm hurt or not? You just tried to slag me, and I'm supposed to trust you?"

Lockdown's arm snapped out, and Swindle found himself lifted up by the neck, vital air and fuel lines crushing together in the bounty-hunter's grip. "You're _supposed_ to show a little more gratitude to the mech who saved your life!"

Swindle wheezed, vents straining against the sudden pressure. Clawing at the bounty hunter's servos proved fruitless—his arms were still too weak from whatever Lockdown had done to him. The fearful clicks escaping his vocalizer would have embarrassed him, had he not been to busy being terrified. This was so much more than he had bargained for...

The bounty hunter let out a derisive snort, dropping his victim back onto the bench. "For such a big-shot info broker, you're pretty far out of the loop. I'm disappointed in you."

Swindle rubbed at his neck, still glaring bloody murder up at his captor. At this point, all he could do was play along and try to figure out what the Pit was happening to him. "I've been...having some trouble reaching my contacts for the last few solar cycles."

"And you didn't think that was a little strange?" Lockdown tilted his head, blood-red optics glimmering in the semi-darkness. "It didn't seem odd to you that every single one of your clients backed out on you at once, and that suddenly you weren't allowed access to your biggest information relays?"

Swindle's frame stiffened, optics narrowing to slits. "How do you know about that?"

"Don't be an idiot." Lockdown smirked, raising his hook. "I'm a hunter, remember? It's my _job_ to know about my prey."

The final piece snapped into place. Swindle leaned back, optics widening again as realization flooded over him. He'd been cut off. His clients had left him high and dry, because they didn't want to get caught too. His arms empire was gone, his information network ruined. He was no longer useful to the universe...now he was just another freelance troublemaker for someone to collect a bounty on.

Someone like Lockdown.

The bounty hunter chuckled, a sound that was sinister enough to make even Swindle shiver. "What's the matter? Finally figured it out?" He folded his arms, a feral smile on his faceplate. "Six solar cycles ago, that team of glitch-detail Autobots from Earth took down Megatron. The war's over, Swindle ol' pal—for real, this time. And even the Elite Guard isn't above paying bounty hunters like me to clean up the mess."

Swindle's servos were trembling now. He clenched them into fists, but Lockdown had already noticed, and was chuckling again. "What's the matter with you? I haven't seen you this shaky since some ticked-off customers of yours trapped you on top of a tower and started blasting it out from underneath you!"

That was about what he _felt_ like. Swindle raised his optics again, no longer even pretending to hide the confusion and fear mixing in with his frustration. "Not that I'm not glad to be online, but if my bounty is so big, then why didn't you just kill me and collect it?"

"Oh, I already did," Lockdown said lightly. He laughed aloud at the utter confusion on Swindle's face. "Come on, how hard d'you think it is to trick Autobots into thinking a mech is dead? All I had to do was strip your mods, use an electric paint job to gray out your colors, and voila! Instant creds, and they didn't even think to check your spark chamber to see if you were really offline. Autobots are _so_ gullible."

Swindle stared at him as he chortled. He was getting the vague feeling that something was _wrong_ here...it took him a moment to figure out exactly what. Then his optic ridges shot up, logic sensors going haywire. "But what do you _get_ out of keeping me online? You had me at point-blank range, completely by surprise...the perfect setup for an instant kill. Without my weapons, I'm barely a threat, and with everyone thinking I'm dead and my networks in ruins, I'm hardly _useful_ to you any more. So why _save_ me?"

There was a very long moment of silence. Then Lockdown sighed, knocking the (former) arms dealer upside the head. "What, do you really think I'd offline you? You _are_ a glitch-head."

Swindle scowled, rubbing at the back of his head. "You'd offline your own creator for the right price—why should I be any different?"

Lockdown's optics flashed, and Swindle ducked, prepared to slide out of the way if the bounty hunter tried to strike him. What he didn't expect was the servo that grabbed his chin, forcing him to look up again—or the rough press of Lockdown's lip components against his own.

It only lasted a moment, but it was enough to make Swindle's logic sensors reboot three times from the sheer senselessness of it all. Lockdown folded his arms and looked away. "You offline is the _last_ thing I want," he muttered. "I'll keep you safe. So quit acting like a scared little sparkling. 'S not like you to give up easy on anything valuable, 'specially something like your life."

Swindle's spark gave an awkward, heavy pulse. "The way the universe is headed, the only valuable Decepticon will be a dead one."

"Then don't be a Decepticon any more." Lockdown shrugged a little, keeping his optics turned away. "Go neutral. Come with me. War or no war, the universe always needs good bounty hunters."

Swindle placed a servo over the Decepticon insignia on his chest compartment, about to refuse on reflex. That symbol had made Megatron and every Decepticon he'd come across twice as willing to buy from him as they had when he'd been neutral. It had granted him access to all kinds of weapons caches and information networks intended for the 'Cons alone.

But the Decepticons were no more. Megatron had been captured, countless others offlined, and the rest of the faction was on the run from the Autobots. If he wanted to survive, he was going to have to abandon his old life.

Well...

"The universe always needs arms dealers too, right?" Swindle managed a soft chuckle. "Alright, you win. I'll stay here with you."

The smile returned to Lockdown's faceplate as he reached for a laser scalpel, but Swindle waved him off, a familiar smug grin lighting up his faceplate. "Take a look at this." He tapped the corner of the symbol twice, then ran his palm across it, and suddenly it was gone. At Lockdown's raised optic ridges, he chuckled again. "They call it a rubsign. Comes in real handy when you're trying to go undercover. I've been using it to give myself a 'Con energy signature for stellar cycles, but I guess it's useless any more."

"Well, well. I pull all your weapons, and I find you're _still_ full of surprises." Almost hesitantly, Lockdown stretched out his servo and touched the now-empty space on Swindle's chest compartment. When the tan mech made no attempt to push him away, he moved a little closer, the touch becoming a gentle caress. "I gotta wonder," he murmured as his companion whrred happily under the touch. "What other secrets do you have locked up in here...?"

Swindle's optics dimmed, and for a moment he was quiet. Then they flickered on again, bright and glittering as he smirked. "Why don't you see for yourself?"

A dark, predatory smile crossed Lockdown's faceplate. "That's the best offer you've made me yet."


End file.
